Input method

Anthy

Anthy is one of the most popular Japanese input method in open source world. Though it is not maintained for a long time, Debian succeeds it from May 2010.

To install Anthy :

# pacman -S anthy

Extra dictionary

Default dictionary of original Anthy does not include several characters which are not specified on EUC-JP (JIS X 0208) such as "①", "♥", etc. alt-cannadic provides extra dictionaries including those characters.

(Though this step repeats the same commands twice, it is not mistypes.)

Anthy Kaomoji

Anthy Kaomoji is a modified version of Anthy that converts Hiragana text to Kana Kanji mixed text and has emoticon (顔文字) and 2ch dictionaries.
It can be found in the AUR (Template:Package AUR).

Mozc

Mozc (on AUR) is a Japanese open source input method originates from Google Japanese Input. It is considered that it has better conversion quality than Anthy as for multi segments conversion (e.g. one sentence) in a lump but the dictionary is not so sufficient. Though Mozc adapts to only ibus and scim input method framework, macuim provides uim-mozc plugin and you can use it with Template:Package AUR on AUR.

## You can choose the input method framework to use either ibus, uim or both.
## If you will be not using ibus, comment out below.
#_ibus_mozc="yes"
## If you will be using uim, uncomment below.
_uim_mozc="yes"
## If you will be using scim, uncomment below.
#_scim_mozc="yes"

Using uim on Emacs

Meanwhile, Anthy and Mozc provide frontend for Emacs, i.e. anthy.el and mozc.el. The one of the features of uim.el is the inline candidates displaying mode. It displays conversion candidates just below (or above) preedit text vertically.

LEIM or minor-mode

You can call uim.el from Emacs in two ways; directly or with the LEIM framework. Though settings of them are different, basic functions are same. If you want to switch between uim.el and other Emacs IMs frequently, you should use LEIM framework.

Settings for the minor-mode

If you will be using on minor-mode, write the following settings into your Template:Filename or some other file for Emacs customizing.

Disabling XIM on Emacs

When you are using input method on your desktop and assigning activation/deactivation of input method to C-SPC, you will be not able to use C-SPC/C-@ as set-mark-command on Emacs. To avoid this problem, add the following into your Template:Filename or Template:Filename. xim will be disabled on Emacs.

Emacs*UseXIM: false

Troubleshooting

Cannot input Japanese on Opera

If you use Opera and cannot input Japanese with uim, try to edit environment variable as follows:

export QT_IM_MODULE='xim'

uim-toolbar-gtk-systray: tray icon is crushed

uim-toolbar-gtk-systray isn't compliant with freedesktop.org system tray specs so some icons are shown in one icon space by default. Choose just one of them to solve it. The steps to display only 'Input mode' icon for example as follows: